This Mother's Day, Let's Give Moms Paid Family Leave

Mother’s Day is a day when we celebrate the women who raised us. To show our love and appreciation, we often give gifts—jewelry, clothing, tickets to a show. While these gifts are wonderful, we should also work towards giving our mothers one gift in particular that could change their lives tremendously—paid family leave.

Family leave has only been around in the United States for a short period. Before 1993, workers had no federal protections to take family and medical leave. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was first introduced in 1984 to ensure that employees could care for themselves, their children, their spouses, or parents and return to work with their jobs or an equivalent job. By 1993, after tireless advocacy, the FMLA passed and has been used more than 200 million times in the two decades since the law’s passage.

The FMLA was an important step forward but was not a comprehensive solution to the challenges workers face. FMLA provides 12 weeks of unpaid job protection per year to full-time employees who have worked for at least a year at an organization with at least 50 employees. These stipulations leave out part-time employees and those who work at small businesses. As such, the FMLA only covers 60 percent of America’s workforce.

Furthermore, even those who do have access to FMLA protections are guaranteed only unpaid leave. Only 15 percent of workers in the United States have paid family leave benefits. Of all the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world’s most highly developed countries, the United States is the only country that does not guarantee paid leave for either parent.

Workers who do not receive paid leave are forced to choose between their incomes and caring for themselves or their families. Discrepancies in paid leave coverage tend to mirror other societal inequalities and have—workers with paid leave are more likely to be paid higher and are thus more able to afford taking time off. Lower-wage and income workers, who are more likely to be living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to take unpaid time off, are much less likely to have paid leave. Lack of paid leave can create a cascade effect for low-income families that are usually already dealing with the high cost of having a child or a long-term illness. If workers are forced to take time off due to a new child or health crisis, a few missed paychecks can send them into poverty. Lack of leave can also hurt businesses, as they lose valuable workers, as well as children, when their parents are forced to go back to work too early and miss important moments in the child’s development.

All parents, mothers included, deserve to spend time with their children immediately after they’re born, and all children deserve to have parents who can spend time with them without fear of losing their income or jobs. Here are a few ideas for how you can help make paid leave a reality for more parents:

Susannah R. Cohen is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. She recently graduated from Columbia University, and grew up in New Rochelle, New York as a member of Westchester Jewish Center in Mamaroneck, NY. She is thrilled to be combining her deep Jewish values with her passion for policy by working on her portfolio topics, which include economic justice and women's issues, as well as working with Women of Reform Judaism.